France: 9-year-old boy left to live alone for 2 years without electricity and heating; mother convicted

A heartbreaking story of a boy has shocked the small French town of Nersac in the Charente region where a mother left her nine-year-old son to live alone while she was staying with her partner in another apartment few kilometres away. The woman, last week, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for abandoning her child. 

The boy, who was not identified, was left to live alone in the family’s apartment from 2020 to 2022 while his mother lived five kilometres away with her partner and would only visit her son every now and then, according to media reports. 

The 6th grader at the time would see his mother occasionally when she came to give him food sometimes. Media reports citing French police said that the nine-year-old most of the time fed himself with canned goods, cakes, and tomatoes stolen from the nearby balcony.

According to the local media Charente Libre, the boy sometimes lived without electricity and hot water in an unheated apartment. He would reportedly wrap himself in several blankets to face the harsh winter months. 

The French media reported that his teachers did not find anything unusual with the boy since he came to school every day, with a smile and was described as a good student. 

“He was smiling, a good student, always clean, polite... No sign indicated that he was abandoned,” Mayor of Nersac, Barbara Couturier, was quoted as saying by Italian newspaper Il Messaggero.

While some of his classmates began to doubt how he was living, the boy told him that he ate by himself, took the bus to school alone and didn’t go out otherwise, a classmate told TF1. 

It was actually the boy’s neighbours, who would sometimes help by giving him food, who eventually told the mayor who then called the police.

Couturier, according to BFMTV, said, “I met his mom on May 2022. She came to tell us that she had financial problems, and we gave her four vouchers for food, but she took some processed food products instead so that got me suspicious.” 

She added, “Some residents told me that there was a child living alone, so I connected the two things and I called the local police and the national police.” 

The mother reportedly identified as Alexandra, 39, pleaded not guilty and denied all the allegations laid out by authorities before the court. 

During the hearing, she insisted that her son was going to Sireuil – where she lived with her partner – by bus while she followed him on a scooter, but the judges found that hard to believe. 

Alexandra also claimed that her son was living with her. However, the French police, upon investigation found she spent her nights in Sireuil and did not take her son to school and none of her neighbours in Sireuil had even seen the boy.

Her lawyer eventually conceded by saying that she is in “denial”. Alexandra was convicted of “abandonment of a minor” and faces 18 months in prison out of which she will spend six months under surveillance with an electronic bracelet. 

The child had been placed under the care of social services in 2022 and eventually transferred to a foster family after Alexandra’s custody was removed. She has only seen him twice since the transfer, while the boy has said he does not want to see her. 

(With inputs from agencies)